We swung through the home and studio of San Francisco based artists Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock. The married couple are putting the finishing touches on the work for their upcoming food-centric show Edible Complex opening at FFDG on Friday, June 22nd (7-10pm). We spoke of San Francisco's love affair with food, got into their working practices, saw what makes them tick and how they keep up with their lively 2 year old son, Brixton while enjoying a couple Coronas.

Your upcoming show at FFDG, opening on June 22nd, focuses a lot on San Francisco's intense food culture. How do you guys, as a family, fit in? Do you eat out a lot?

Ferris: Well... we order a lot of food in... Having a 2 year old with an attention span of 10 seconds means that when we eat out, we often eat
in shifts... We eat a lot in Japantown because our son Brixton really loves to run around there and he loves to eat sushi.

Kelly: We also have a very unique place that we're coming from- being kind of insiders and outsiders of the food bit at this point in our lives. I love so many places, and we've been lucky to be tangentially and directly involved in many efforts.

It's truly a special occasion that we're out for dinner together- and frankly, we're more often grabbing food from a truck at events and
stuff, but yeah- a little more out of the loop than I used to be, so it's interesting to see how eating in the Bay Area has shifted in focus and intensity in just the last five years or so.

Do you think San Franciscans are too focused on food?

Ferris: I think everybody is focused on food because we all die if we don't eat.

However, I feel like I have seen enough photoblogs of peoples' food to last me a life time.

Sometimes I feel like our food culture renaissance is a bit like couture... It is based more on concept and pushing the outrageous and less on consumption. Isn't weird there is a cupcake store downtown that puts cupcakes in its windows to show their outrageous culinary inventions... but no one ever eats them? They all get thrown out?

We're excited to open the two person food-centric show Edible Complex with San Francisco based Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock featuring collaboration and individual paintings from these long time Fecal Pals.

Rise Japan is an organization that is helping raise money for the ongoing support of the people of Japan. I know it isn't front page news anymore but, the people there are still suffering badly and are in need of aid.

Rise Japan asked Kelly Tunstall and I to create designs for tote bags with all the money received going to the relief effort going on in Japan. Kinokuniya Bookstore sponsored the whole run of tote bags which is awesome and can be purchase there too! Please check out the link below if you have time and please repost it to your twitter and facebook accounts if you can. -Ferris Plock

Skoolers are from an era of the past and a huge influence on where action sports is now. They say good things must come to an end, so here is a piece of history that needed to be documented. Thanks to Ferris Plock for sharing the skooler story with us.

After trying to hail a cab for over an hour on Saturday, we barely made the opening where San Francisco based Ferris Plock opened Just For One Day, his latest in the traditional Japanese style. Acrylic paintings on wood-stained backgrounds/ a modernized recreation of Japanese ukiyo-e wood block prints.

Artists and husband and wife duo Ferris Plock and Kelly Tunstall.

Due to some crazy SF cab shortage, we just caught the last 5 minutes of the reception.

This new collection expands upon the artist's captivating use of ukiyo-e inspired design and vibrantly unique characters while exploring the images that shaped his childhood. The exhibit is the artist's second solo show with The Shooting Gallery and will include over twenty pieces utilizing a mix of acrylic, gouache, gold leaf, and spray paint on wood panel. ~complete details

The one of a kind arts residency program at Recology (SF's garbage dump) is accepting applications for the 2012 program year (complete details/ info below).

Each artist accepted gets a studio at Recology for a month and allowed complete access to all the garbage that's dumped there. You create your art from what you find with a reception at the end of the month. To get a flavor, check Ferris Plock's blog from his residency.

Video from the last opening at Recology we checked out a few months back.

The goal of the Artist-in-Residence Program is to use art to inspire people to recycle more and conserve our natural resources. We provide local artists with the opportunity to create art using materials they gather from San Francisco's refuse. This includes 24-hour access to a well-equipped 2,000 sq. ft. art studio, a monthly stipend and an exhibit at the end of each residency. Note: Only local professional artists who reside in the Bay Area (1 hour’s drive) may apply.

Prior to applying, artists must take a tour of the recycling facilities, art studio, and sculpture garden by joining one of our monthly tours for the general public. The tours are held on the third Saturday of each month at 10 a.m. To reserve a spot and get important information, please call Micah Gibson at 415-330-1414. Applications are available at www.recology.com/AIR

This exhibition will be the culmination of four months of work by the artists who have scavenged materials from the dump to make art and promote recycling and reuse. ~SHOW DETAILS

Suzanne Husky's work in progress

Friday night’s exhibition reception will include food provided by the El Tonayense Taco Truck. --> and to see some behind the scenes, check out Ferris Plock's blog as the show progressed: BLOG 1 | BLOG 2 | BLOG 3

San Francisco is a great city for many reasons, and one of them is that our city dump has an artist residency program. That's right, they invite a couple artists at a time to rummage through our trash and make art from it. In fact, artists are only allowed to use materials they find at the dump to create the show, and they have 3 months to do so (photos from last reception).

San Francisco is a great city for many reasons, and one of them is that our city dump has an artist residency program. That's right, they invite a couple artists at a time to rummage through our trash and make art from it. In fact, artists are only allowed to use materials they find at the dump to create the show, and they have 3 months to do so (photos from last reception).

Our buddy Ferris Plock has just began his art dump residency and will be blogging as he creates his show opening January 21st. This is his second blogging installment. (check his first)

A massive group show with over 111 pieces of work which opened last Thursday here in SF. Congrats hanging all those pieces at gift giving holiday prices. Mucho eye candy with many friendly folks to have a drink with. As you can imagine with so many artists participating, it was crowded and fun.

San Francisco is a great city for many reasons, and one of them is that our city dump has an artist residency program. That's right, they invite a couple artists at a time to rummage through our trash and make art from it. In fact, artists are only allowed to use materials they find at the dump to create the show, and they have 3 months to do so (photos from last reception).

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

SAN FRANCISCO --- The Headlands Center for the Arts is preparing for their largest fundraiser of the year set to go down on June 4th at SOMArts here in the city. Art auction, food, drinks, live music, etc and all for helping to support a great institution up in the Marin Headlands. ~details

ABOUT HEADLANDSHeadlands Center for the Arts provides an unparalleled environment for the creative process and the development of new work and ideas. Through a range of programs for artists and the public, we offer opportunities for reflection, dialogue, and exchange that build understanding and appreciation for the role of art in society.

Just want to say congrats to Fecal Face's Rachel Ralph for graduating from SFAI with her masters in curatorial studies. Also want to congratulate Alex Ziv who also just got his MFA in painting. Also a high five to the talented Mario Ayala who also just graduated from SFAI as well! --- All super talented artists (thinkers), and we're excited to see what the future holds for them!

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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